DRINKING WATER
The Circular Water Economy is built on the so-called six Rs: "Reduce," "Reuse," "Recycle," "Reclaim," "Recover," and "Restore". The six elements represent different strategies aimed at sustainable water management and conservation.
DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS
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KETOS SHIELD Delivers Insight Into Critical Water Quality Parameters
Food company leverages the KETOS SHIELD to stabilize water quality, reduce chemical costs, and ensure compliance with proactive water quality monitoring.
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Advanced Diagnostics of Thermal Mass Flow Meters
Many thermal mass flow meters are of the insertion type. As a starting point, proper insertion depth and straight run per the manufacturer’s recommendations should be adhered to.
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Modern Metering Adoption At Smaller Public Water Systems
As with most things in life, there are those water utilities that have and those that don’t. According to the EPA, less than 3% of the 150,110 operational public water systems (PWS) in the U.S. serve more than 10,000 people. And those 4,500 systems serve 79% of the population. Not that being big means living trouble free. Many of these water authorities serve cities plagued by under investment over decades in their water systems. And yet with large rate-bases comes the means to spread the investment in modern technology across many households and water consumers.
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Making TCP Removal Almost As Easy As 1, 2, 3
Our environment is rife with testimonials to the law of unintended consequences. When it comes to water treatment, the compound 1,2,3-trichloropropane (TCP) is the latest surprise making its way through the remediation lifecycle.
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Water Quality Monitoring To Ensure Consistent Product Quality
A vineyard in California's Central Valley that grows grapes, almonds, and a variety of other crops faced a number of issues including the inability to obtain real-time insight into Nitrates and Boron from their groundwater supply; the need to generate the correct mixture of surface water and groundwater to protect crops agains excess fertilization.
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Top 12 Communication Hacks
As a meter technology company, we understand the importance of approaching challenges with smart solutions and proactive communication. Ultimately, our technology is all about helping customers and utilities to feel empowered, connected, and capable of taking on problems. Master Meter, Inc. created a list of the top 12 communication hacks found to be most successful in 2020. Implement these tactics and watch your utility connect with your customers and build trust with your community.
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A New Standard For Measuring Pipe Wall Thickness Of Asbestos Cement Pipe
Internal pipe Low Voltage Alternating Current Gradient (LVACG) machine-intelligent technology can be used for assessing pressurized water mains for leaks and measuring pipe wall thickness.
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Oxidation And AOP: The Last Lines Of Defense Against Harmful Algal Blooms
Secondary metabolites of algae — including algal toxins and taste and odor compounds triggered by a harmful algal bloom — can find their way into source water, creating the risk that they will ultimately reach the water treatment plant to cause water-quality problems. Here is a checklist of considerations for mitigating those effects through cost-effective oxidation, or combined oxidization processes, across a variety of source water conditions.
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PFAS Remediation: How To Construct A Temporary Solution For A Forever Chemical
This article will discuss considerations for designing a temporary solution for removing per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from water, including effective technologies and how to select a solutions provider.
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CyANWeb Tool Helps Monitor Water Quality To Detect Early Warning Signs Of Harmful Algal Blooms
Cyanobacteria occur naturally in many water bodies, but when they multiply, they can form harmful algal blooms (HABs), which can increase drinking water treatment costs for communities and impact recreational areas such as lakes. To notify communities about potential HABs, EPA researchers created CyANWeb.
DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES
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Thermal Flow Meters For Mixed Gas Applications5/22/2017
Fox Thermal Flow Meters use a constant temperature differential (constant Δ T) technology to measure mass flow rate of air and gases.
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Lab Gas Sub-Metering Accuracy Improves With Thermal Flow Meters To Save Money12/1/2017
Facility administrators will find the advanced ST100 Series Thermal Mass Air/Gas Flow Meter from Fluid Components International (FCI) helps them improve the accuracy of specialty gas point of use and sub-metering operations to achieve accurate billing in their labs for better cost tracking and control.
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Determination Of Pesticide Residue In Vegetables9/10/2014
QuEChERS is a Quick-Easy-Cheap-Effective-Rugged-Safe extraction method that has been developed for the determination of pesticide residues in agricultural commodities.
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Chlorine Method For UKAS Accreditation And DWI Compliance At Welsh Water4/13/2017
In 2013 the Drinking Water Inspectorate for England & Wales announced that water samples collected in England and Wales must be tested in a laboratory that meets specific standards for drinking water sampling and analysis. At the time of the new instruction, the chlorine method employed at the Welsh Water Bretton laboratory was unable to meet these requirements, notably for the prescribed limit of detection. This prompted the laboratory to investigate new analytical options for monitoring residual chlorine.
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Leak Detection On Water Distribution Network Using Clamp-On Flowmeters5/22/2023
A global engineering company realized that their leak identification methods were time consuming and expensive, and so began to explore alternative solutions, such as ultrasonic flow meters.
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Application Note: Employing Best Water Quality Monitoring Practices To Reduce Runoff During Construction8/4/2011Under proposed EPA stormwater runoff guidelines, construction site operators will be required to actively monitor or sample stormwater discharges daily. The enhanced effluent rules take effect in August 2011 for construction sites that disturb 20 or more acres and February 2014 for sites that disturb 10 or more acres, and they may stipulate a strict numerical limit of less than 280 NTU for average turbidity (sediment in water) on any day. By YSI
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Application Note: Troubleshooting A pH Electrode1/26/2011
Many factors affect performance of a pH electrode. When performance degrades, it is always a challenge for the analyst to identify the cause. Common troubleshooting procedures, which include evaluation of slope, electrode drift, time response, and accuracy, take considerable time. By Thermo Fisher Scientific
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Application Note: Desalination Plants: YSI Instruments Monitor Flow & Water Quality At Multiple Stages2/3/2011Desalination is the process of removing salt from sea water or brackish river or groundwater to make potable water. By YSI
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LC-MS Analysis Of PFAS Compounds In EPA 533 After Supelclean™ ENVI-WAX SPE Cleanup8/29/2022
This application note demonstrates the extraction and subsequent analysis of 25 related analytes from water using Supelco SPE cartridges.
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Flow Meter Enhances Chlorination System Performance For Municipal Water Department12/12/2017
The water municipality at a mid-size city in the Western region of the U.S. serving a population of about 180,000 people needed to address a chlorine disinfection system problem at one of its water treatment plants.
LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER
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The WHO estimates that more than 1 million deaths each year are attributable to lead poisoning. In more recent years, this number has risen at an incredible pace, with some research showing that nearly 5.5 million adults die from lead-related health complications. Understanding and addressing this persistent problem will require improved monitoring, targeted remediation, and a great deal more awareness and dialogue.
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What do the semiconductor, food and beverage, petrochemical, and power generation industries have in common? They all rely on water to produce — an increasingly scarce resource.
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Heavy rains in California prove the worthiness of the "sponge city" concept.
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As interest grows, real-world examples of energy generated within water pipes is confirming the viability of this innovative practice.
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With funds falling short of costs for pending PFAS rules compliance, utilities require an economical treatment solution.
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Following the completion of the acquisition of Canadian company Real Tech by ABB, hear from Jean-René Roy, Global Business Line Manager, ABB Measurement & Analytics, and Jodi Glover, CEO and co-founder of Real Tech.
ABOUT DRINKING WATER
In most developed countries, drinking water is regulated to ensure that it meets drinking water quality standards. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Drinking water considerations can be divided into three core areas of concern:
- Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
- Drinking water treatment of source water
- Distribution of treated drinking water to consumers
Drinking Water Sources
Source water access is imperative to human survival. Sources may include groundwater from aquifers, surface water from rivers and streams and seawater through a desalination process. Direct or indirect water reuse is also growing in popularity in communities with limited access to sources of traditional surface or groundwater.
Source water scarcity is a growing concern as populations grow and move to warmer, less aqueous climates; climatic changes take place and industrial and agricultural processes compete with the public’s need for water. The scarcity of water supply and water conservation are major focuses of the American Water Works Association.
Drinking Water Treatment
Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.
There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used for contaminant removal and the removal of pathogens to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.
The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.
The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.
During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.
Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.
Drinking Water Distribution
Drinking water distribution involves the management of flow of the treated water to the consumer. By some estimates, up to 30% of treated water fails to reach the consumer. This water, often called non-revenue water, escapes from the distribution system through leaks in pipelines and joints, and in extreme cases through water main breaks.
A public water authority manages drinking water distribution through a network of pipes, pumps and valves and monitors that flow using flow, level and pressure measurement sensors and equipment.
Water meters and metering systems such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) allows a water utility to assess a consumer’s water use and charge them for the correct amount of water they have consumed.